CHAPTER XIII 



CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND ROMANTIC CONCEPTIONS 



OF NATURE 



I. Kant and his Immediate Successors 



Mafer/alism and spiritualism i)i the eighteenth century 



THE TRANSITION PERIOD between the eighteenth century and the suc- 

 ceeding era is characterized by the violent political and social 

 convulsions beginning with the French Revolution in 1789 and 

 ending with the fall of Napoleon in 181 5. During this period came into being 

 the modern social system, which, based on the claim of the private citizen 

 to be allowed both to determine his own actions and to take part in the 

 administration of the State, is sharply contrasted with that of the preceding 

 age, with the State possessing unlimited authority in all matters, both secu- 

 lar and spiritual. But even from a purely scientific point of view the begin- 

 ning of the nineteenth century involved a radical revolution, which had 

 been long preparing, like the political revolution, throughout the centuries. 

 In the eighteenth century's conceptions of nature and life, the two tendencies 

 described in the foregoing — the mechanical and the mystical-spiritualis- 

 tic — appear in deep contrast to one another. Out of the former, which has 

 its origin in the natural philosophy and natural-scientific research of the 

 seventeenth century, and which, like its predecessors, seeks to explain 

 natural phenomena on purely mechanical lines, there develops towards the 

 close of the eighteenth century — during the so-called "Era of Enlighten- 

 ment" — a general materialism of the kind that we have seen in La Mettrie: 

 a conception of life expressing itself partly in a dogmatically formulated 

 theory of existence as a play of exclusively material forces, and partly, in 

 the ethical sphere, in a doctrine of a state of blessedness common to all 

 mankind, based ultimately on the liberty to enjoy life independent of tradi- 

 tional rules of conduct. This doctrine, which assumed its best-known and 

 most popular form in Holbach's work Systeme de la nature, is remarkable for 

 its readiness to answer every conceivable question in accordance with the 

 formula, laid down once and for all, that, provided the mechanical explana- 

 tion of nature is maintained, the most daring constructions of thought and 

 the weakest verbal subtleties may pass as complete scientific evidence. 

 Intellectual superficiality and banal hedonistic morality thus became marks 



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